Language education – the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language – is primarily a branch of applied linguistics, but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language education: communicative competencies, proficiencies, cross-cultural experiences, and multiple literacies.
English as a second or foreign language is the use of English by speakers with different native languages, often with students whose native language is not English and are learning to speak and write English, commonly among students Language education for people learning English may be known as English as a foreign language (EFL), English as a second language (ESL), English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), English as an additional language (EAL), or English as a New Language (ENL), which refers to the practice of studying English in a country where it is not the dominant language. These programs, especially ESL, are usually an academic subject, course, or program designed to teach English to students who are not yet proficient in the language. While some people only refer to learning in an English-speaking country, learning this language can also entail learning in a non-English speaking or non-native nation.
Communicative language teaching (CLT), or the communicative approach (CA), is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study.
Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning — otherwise referred to as L2acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. The field of second-language acquisition is regarded by some but not everybody as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines, such as psychology and education.
A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be unidirectional, meaning that they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can be bidirectional, allowing translation to and from both languages. Bidirectional bilingual dictionaries usually consist of two sections, each listing words and phrases of one language alphabetically along with their translation. In addition to the translation, a bilingual dictionary usually indicates the part of speech, gender, verb type, declension model and other grammatical clues to help a non-native speaker use the word. Other features sometimes present in bilingual dictionaries are lists of phrases, usage and style guides, verb tables, maps and grammar references. In contrast to the bilingual dictionary, a monolingual dictionary defines words and phrases instead of translating them.
The audio-lingual method or Army Method is a method used in teaching foreign languages. It is based on behaviorist theory, which postulates that certain traits of living things, and in this case humans, could be trained through a system of reinforcement. The correct use of a trait would receive positive feedback while incorrect use of that trait would receive negative feedback.
A foreign language writing aid is a computer program or any other instrument that assists a non-native language user in writing decently in their target language. Assistive operations can be classified into two categories: on-the-fly prompts and post-writing checks. Assisted aspects of writing include: lexical, syntactic, lexical semantic and idiomatic expression transfer, etc. Different types of foreign language writing aids include automated proofreading applications, text corpora, dictionaries, translation aids and orthography aids.
The generative approach to second language (L2) acquisition (SLA) is a cognitive based theory of SLA that applies theoretical insights developed from within generative linguistics to investigate how second languages and dialects are acquired and lost by individuals learning naturalistically or with formal instruction in foreign, second language and lingua franca settings. Central to generative linguistics is the concept of Universal Grammar (UG), a part of an innate, biologically endowed language faculty which refers to knowledge alleged to be common to all human languages. UG includes both invariant principles as well as parameters that allow for variation which place limitations on the form and operations of grammar. Subsequently, research within the Generative Second-Language Acquisition (GenSLA) tradition describes and explains SLA by probing the interplay between Universal Grammar, knowledge of one's native language and input from the target language. Research is conducted in syntax, phonology, morphology, phonetics, semantics, and has some relevant applications to pragmatics.
Language teaching, like other educational activities, may employ specialized vocabulary and word use. This list is a glossary for English language learning and teaching using the communicative approach.
Harold Edward Palmer, usually just Harold E. Palmer, was an English linguist, phonetician and pioneer in the field of teaching English as a second language. Especially he dedicated himself to Oral Method. He stayed in Japan for 14 years and reformed its English education. He contributed to the development of the applied linguistics of the 20th century.
The direct method of teaching, which is sometimes called the natural method, and is often used in teaching foreign languages, refrains from using the learners' native language and uses only the target language. It was established in England around 1900 and contrasts with the grammar–translation method and other traditional approaches, as well as with C.J. Dodson's bilingual method. It was adopted by key international language schools such as Berlitz, Alliance Française and Inlingua in the 1970s and many of the language departments of the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department in 2012.
Back-chaining is a technique used in teaching oral language skills, especially with polysyllabic or difficult words and phrases. The teacher pronounces the last syllable, the student repeats, and then the teacher continues, working backwards from the end of the word to the beginning.
Wolfgang Butzkamm is Professor Emeritus of English as a foreign language at Aachen University, Germany. He is credited with the development of a principled and systematic approach to the role of the mother tongue in foreign language teaching which radically differs from a target-language-only philosophy prevailing in many countries. For him, traditional monolingualism is an instance of a more general naturalistic fallacy which is committed when foreign language teaching is modelled after the natural acquisition of a first language (L1), as in the direct method (education) which was also called the natural method.
The lexical approach is a method of teaching foreign languages described by Michael Lewis in the early 1990s. The basic concept on which this approach rests is the idea that an important part of learning a language consists of being able to understand and produce lexical phrases as chunks. Students are taught to be able to perceive patterns of language (grammar) as well as have meaningful set uses of words at their disposal when they are taught in this way. In 2000, Norbert Schmitt, an American linguist and a Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, contributed to a learning theory supporting the lexical approach he stated that "the mind stores and processes these [lexical] chunks as individual wholes." The short-term capacity of the brain is much more limited than long-term and so it is much more efficient for our brain to pull up a lexical chunk as if it were one piece of information as opposed to pulling up each word as separate pieces of information.
Heritage language learning, or heritage language acquisition, is the act of learning a heritage language from an ethnolinguistic group that traditionally speaks the language, or from those whose family historically spoke the language. According to a commonly accepted definition by Valdés, heritage languages are generally minority languages in society and are typically learned at home during childhood. When a heritage language learner grows up in an environment with a dominant language that is different from their heritage language, the learner appears to be more competent in the dominant language and often feels more comfortable speaking in that language. "Heritage language" may also be referred to as "community language", "home language", and "ancestral language".
Language pedagogy is the discipline concerned with the theories and techniques of teaching language. It has been described as a type of teaching wherein the teacher draws from their own prior knowledge and actual experience in teaching language. The approach is distinguished from research-based methodologies.
In foreign language teaching, the sandwich technique is the oral insertion of an idiomatic translation in the mother tongue between an unknown phrase in the learned language and its repetition, in order to convey meaning as rapidly and completely as possible. The mother tongue equivalent can be given almost as an aside, with a slight break in the flow of speech to mark it as an intruder.
In foreign language teaching, the generative principle reflects the human capacity to generate an infinite number of phrases and sentences from a finite grammatical or linguistic competence. This capacity was captured in Wilhelm von Humboldt's famous phrase that language makes "infinite use of finite means". It is the theoretical basis for pattern drills and substitution tables - an essential component of the audio-lingual method - and may be considered as the necessary counterpart to the communicative principle, i.e. teaching communication through communicating.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to second-language acquisition:
The bilingual method of foreign language teaching was developed by C.J. Dodson (1967) as a counterpart of the audiovisual method. In both methods the preferred basic texts are dialogues accompanied by a picture strip. The bilingual method, however, advocates two revolutionary principles based on the results of scientifically controlled experiments in primary and secondary schools. In contrast to the audiovisual method and the direct method, the printed text is made available from the very beginning and presented simultaneously with the spoken sentence to allow learners to see the shape of individual words. Also, from the outset meanings are conveyed bilingually as utterance equivalents in the manner of the sandwich technique, thus avoiding meaningless and hence tedious parroting of the learning input. The pictures are seen primarily as an aid to recall and practice of the related dialogue sentences rather than as conveyors of meaning. The mother tongue is again used in the oral manipulation of grammatical structures, i.e. in bilingual pattern drills.
